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Fewer still prompt as wide a chasm between the opposite ends of those spectrums than Leigh Griffiths yet still manage to function.

Yet there he is, battling his demons in the unforgiving harshness of a halogen-lit glare, like a Christian trying to fend off lions, for us all to judge him, one way or another.

So often winning the fight but still giving up a late equaliser in the war with himself, as he did again with “tape-gate” in midweek.

Despite admitting his issues, despite a mea culpa that for the past two years he’s been dealing with the depths of depression, he’s still expected to walk out in front of 60,000 people, shove it all in a lead-lined box inside him and perform?

What gives us the right to expect it from him? To expect perfection and infallibility from someone who can’t even expect it from himself?

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Most people dealing with mental health issues retreat. They step back from the arena causing their discomfort.

They find reasons not to go into work, not to deal with the boss giving them a hard time, not to have to cope with the burden of expectation on them when they’re struggling to meet it.

Griffiths has tried that, though. Now he either won’t or can’t.

What he needs then is support – and while he’ll never get it from opposition fans, who prey like scavenging vultures on everything from his hair weave to his weans, he obviously feels he’s entitled to a little more of it from a fellow pro like Kris Boyd.

A guy who runs his own mental health charity that’s doing fantastic work in Ayrshire and was rewarded last year in the Grassroots Awards that the Sunday Mail run with the SFA.

But his total lack of empathy for the Celtic striker was jarring, whether he’s on the clock as a pundit for Sky or not, a stance he has now doubled down on. Wrongly.

He says mentally, Griffiths needs to prove he’s strong enough to keep playing at Celtic.

His presence in the team suggests Neil Lennon thinks he is – and scoring two in two games suggests the player is in a decent enough place after a really rough ride in 2019.

Griffiths’ career stats are exceptional, surely enough to earn him the benefit of the doubt Boyd seems so reluctant to offer.

He’s scored 220 goals in 445 games in his career, 109 in 221 for Celtic. Pretty much one every two games. But in the last 116 of those, since Brendan Rodgers took over four seasons ago, only 60 of those games have been starts, the other 56 from the bench, and he’s still managed 42 goals.

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When it comes to validation for his work, he’s had to virtually beg for it.

At one point he couldn’t even get on the bench because Anthony Stokes, Teemu Pukki, John Guidetti, even Stefan Scepovic were all ahead of him.

In the 2015 calendar year he scored 37 in 52 yet still only had two Scotland starts to his name at that point, both when he was at Wolves.

He had to sit and watch and wait while Amido Balde, Carlton Cole and Nadir Ciftci all came and went like fad fashions.

He had to play second fiddle to Moussa Dembele on his inexorable rise and now is sucking it up again behind the huge talent of Odsonne Edouard.

Sure, he hasn’t made life easy for himself at times – tying scarves to posts at Ibrox after Old Firm games, the odd questionable tweet, not exactly the behavioural traits of a man who would rather shut out the noise in his life.

But with addictive personalities it can be compulsive and self-destructive.

Plenty of players get by without the need for controversy or confrontation, for Griffiths it seems unavoidable. And while rolled-up sock tape isn’t exactly an offensive weapon, you can’t launch it at old Uncle Albert next to the dugout just because he’s been abusing you like a dog all night and expect not to have the book thrown back at you.

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Especially in our over-reactive goldfish bowl, where the likes of Boyd demand instant parity for the perceived injustices foisted on Alfredo Morelos.

But look at the difference in language used around Griffiths and Brian Rice’s cry for help last week.

Brave Chipper – but slate-loose, can’t-be-trusted Sparky? Is that fair, when both have prostrated themselves for their flaws in the same way?

It doesn’t, nor should it, give either of them carte blanche – but in football you’re expected to simply “man up” and suck up a lot of what’s aimed at you.

If you’re not feeling good about yourself, your reaction is going to manifest itself in different ways.

For Griffiths, here’s hoping that’s simply in him scoring, and not in reacting.

Because Lord knows we could be doing with him. A hungry Griffiths out to prove the world wrong is a player we should all want in the Scotland squad in a few weeks’ time.